1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates broadly to the field of heat exchangers, and more specifically to a method for continuously forming spine fin coil type heat exchangers.
2. Description of Related Art
When manufacturing spine fin coils, and/or other coils for refrigeration systems, some coils are not completed for a variety of reasons. For example, the reel ran out of spine fin before the complete coil was finished, or the desired number of wraps was not completed before running out of spine fin on the reel.
There is a lot of waste involved in scraping a coil that is partially formed. When shaping a coil of spine fin, the spine fins are easily deformed and flattened as the coil is processed through the shaper that crushed the spine fin flat, which causes the air flow through the coil in a refrigerant system to be restricted.
It would be a decided advantage in the industry to salvage spine fin which is now considerer to be scrap and to reprocess the scrap spine fin into useable continuously form helically wound fin tube coils. Further, it would be advantageous if the device performing continuous helical formation from scrap were adaptable to form heat exchanger coils of almost any size with minimizing the pattern deformity of crushing the spine fins.
In the manufacturer of spine fin heat exchanger tubes it is common to form bends in the tubes at selected locations along its length by apply a force to the tube through the spine fin material to produce the bends. During the application of such force the spine fins at the bend are severely damaged and mutilated as the bend is formed. Therefore, it is desirable to provide apparatus and method which will control the pattern deformity and does hot crush the spine fins after forming bends in the shaper in the spine fin tubing but will reduce the damage and improve the process.